rich parents won't pay???

Paying for College
1

<p>Hi, I'm trying to figure out what to do because my parents refuse to pay for my college. They are pretty wealthy, they probably make like a quarter mil a year. We have a pretty ****ty relationship though and recently I learned that I won't be able to get any money for college. I basically need $20k a year for all my living expenses to attend my college (UGA). Is there any way I can apply for need-based scholarships?</p>

<p>It would also be great if anyone could redirect me to any merit-based scholarships that are still open this late in the year. I'm top 20% of my class, 2250 SATs so I figure I <em>should</em> be able to get at least something.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance</p>

2

<p>If your parents earn $250,000 a year, you will NOT be eligible for need based aid…anywhere.</p>

<p>I don’t think you are going to find a merit award at this late date. Most of those deadlines are long gone. </p>

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<p>Are you talking about tuition/room/board/fees/expenses…or are you talking about living expenses (room/board/expenses)?</p>

<p>Are you an instate student for UGA? </p>

<p>You need to talk to your parents. You need to find out what they hope to see you doing next year. If it’s college, then you need to find out how they expect you to pay for it.</p>

<p>If there is some reason for this relationship issue, perhaps you should figure out a way to mend fences.</p>

3

<p>Scholarships: a certain website that has a very common-sense name… sorry CC won’t let me post it. Google, Google, Google. Religion, associations, aspirations, race if you are a minority.</p>

<p>Work: Sounds like you will have to work. Start looking for it now. If you are a boy you are lucky as you may be able to get work in construction, though it’s hard. You will not regret working two jobs during the summers so you can work a lot less during the school year.</p>

<p>Housing: Off-campus housing is often cheaper. If you are upstanding and have a good set of recommendations, you could eventually try to be a houseboy at a sorority for free board.</p>

<p>Food: $20k probably includes protein, fresh fruits and vegetables, etc. Plan on Ramen, frozen fish sticks and huge boxes of apples to get you through and you can save $1k right there, if not more (not sure what they charge a month but I think when I went it was $300? And I can now feed a family of four on $400 from grocery stores and that’s organics!). Don’t get the meal plan, DO find the cheapest groceries in town and shop the sales.</p>

<p>Jobs during school: Right now you have a guidance counselor. Have him/ her help you write a resume (one pager) to get service jobs, and another one for on-campus jobs. Get some letters of recommendation NOW. Have a packet with a resume and two or three letters stapled to it, and make copies at your high school now while you still have some pocket money. Your first week, go door to door, hand the appropriate resume (either service or academic / clerical, depending on the type of job) and take their numbers on a list: name of job, number, contact person. Call them back a week later. Go to visit two weeks later. Look for 15 hrs a week. Ideally wait until your second quarter when you are settled.</p>

<p>Alternatives: Go to CC for two years to save money. I know it sucks, but that is life. Lots of people do it.</p>

<p>People pay for college but most people work. It’s possible. DO NOT TAKE OUT PRIVATE LOANS. Just don’t. Hopefully you already know this, but the interest will kill you.</p>

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<p>Won’t you get free tuition at UGA because of HOPE? If so, then don’t you just need money for room, board, and books? If you have HOPE, then you do NOT need $20k…you only need about $10k or so…plus some money earned from a job for pocket money.</p>

<p>Room and board: $8,460 </p>

<p>Are you a NMF? If so, you can still get scholarship money.</p>

<p>What is your GPA?</p>

<p>Are you saying that your parents won’t pay ANYTHING for college? Is this because of your relationship? If so, you better mend that. What are the issues? Are you “back-talking”? missing curfew? partying too much?</p>

<p>Private scholarships are not going to solve this problem because they’re often small, have a “need” component, and are only for frosh year…so that won’t work for you.</p>

<p>How much can you earn over the summer?</p>

5

<p>You are stuck between a rock and a hard place. You will be considered a dependent of your parents until age 24 (sucks, but that is the way the game is played). Colleges will expect your folks to pay.</p>

<p>Here’s your options:

  1. Make peace with your parents. Only you can decide if that is being mature or selling your soul. Some material that might help are “Healing from Family Rifts” by Mark Sichel and “Toxic Parents” by Susan Forward. Forward also has written “Emotional Blackmail.” </p>

<p>Whether or not you pursue college, it IS mature to work to understand why your parents make the choices they do and why they have the value set they have. Their choices and value sets may never align with yours, but you can get to the point where you understand how they see things without it making you crazy and aggressive or disdainful. That is huge in healing your own soul and in not lugging a sack of anger down your life paths. </p>

<p>2) Take out tons of loans.<br>
This will seem like the “fix it now” option – and colleges (and the internet) can certainly set you up with the loan sharks to make this happen. Bad idea. Some loans are reasonable (Stafford subsidized, for instance) but you sound like you are looking for the whole enchilada and that can’t be done without creating years of staggering debt payback.</p>

<p>3) Work until you are 24.
Not attractive but doable. </p>

<p>4) Join the Military or Coast Guard
Often these paths will have some options/benefits for college expenses. Watch out for the difference between what they say and what they actually deliver. For instance, the recruiter says “Up to $40K for college” and you want to know what you will ACTUALLY get (might be $2K). The recruiter may not be the one that knows the answer. Tread carefully and research well. </p>

<p>That’s it. There is no truly happy option here. Please don’t think you can stay *<strong><em>ed at your parents and not have a hard road ahead. Sometimes it is worth it to stay *</em></strong>ed. Other times it is worth it to let go of the past anger and hurts and see what it is that will make the parents happy and see if you can make some strides down that path.</p>

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<p>Your SAT score is good. What about your grades? Read through this, and see if anything would work for you. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Thanks alot for the advice everyone. With the HOPE scholarship I would basically cut all of my tuition costs, but still I would have to pay $11k a year for living expenses. I figure I can save another $2k or so by living off ramen and just living frugally. Would 8k-9k a year be an acceptable amount to take a student loan off of? and where would be a good place to get my loan from?</p>

<p>Also, there’s no way I can “make peace”’ with my parents. They’re the typical demanding immigrant parents and I got kicked out after getting straight C’s last semester. So…yeah…</p>

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<p>By completing a FAFSA, you are eligible for $5500 in Stafford loan.</p>

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<p>You have a 2250 SAT and earned stratight Cs? I think there are a lot of parents who wouldn’t fund your room and board. </p>

<p>Is there a reason why you can’t stay home and commute?</p>

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<p>And we’re an example. Actually, we wouldn’t even fund college under those circumstances; we’d wait a few years until we saw some evidence of maturity. No way would we pay for college when we can’t even supply a student! </p>

<p>Our kids have known this all along.</p>

<p>OP, maybe your parents are waiting for you to join your own team.</p>

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You should be able to cover about 1/2 of this by working during the summer and by working during school. Working about 10 hours a week during school should be very doable (the kids on work study will be working about this much). Depending on how much you hustle you can push this number up … my last two years of college I worked the 3 weeks of the winter break and each summer had two jobs working about 70 hours a week … not so much by choice but by necessity to stay at my school.</p>

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<p>I hate to add to your worries but with straight C’s you better get your grades up to even get HOPE and to not get rescinded from UGA. On your other thread about UGA Honors, the auto-admits went out in December. I also know people who applied and have been accepted, not sure if all acceptances are out but I don’t think it is in the cards for you (particularly when they see those C’s).</p>

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<p>Please, I came here for advice, not to be lectured by strangers on the Internet. FYI, I was taking 8 ap classes (including a morning class and an online class). My overall weighted gpa is still a 4.0, and my unweighted is a 3.3. So yeah, i effed up, but not enough to be deprived of every cent of my college fund. Hell, even if they were poor, at least I would be able to get some need-based aid. </p>

<p>I’m sorry if I sound really rude but I’m just hella frustrated right now.</p>

<p>@2collegewego - I can’t stay home and commute because I’m living with a friend in his apartment, but he is going to go to illinois for college</p>

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<p>*Would 8k-9k a year be an acceptable amount to take a student loan off of? and where would be a good place to get my loan from?</p>

<p>Also, there’s no way I can “make peace”’ with my parents. They’re the typical demanding immigrant parents and I got kicked out after getting straight C’s last semester. So…yeah… *</p>

<p>You don’t have a relationship with your parents so you won’t be able to borrow that much. You can only borrow 5500 for your frosh year. If you borrow more than that you’ll have to get your parents to co-sign…which doesn’t sound like will happen.</p>

<p>Did your parents submit FAFSA? if not, I’m not sure if you can borrow the $5500.</p>

<p>You will HAVE to get a summer job to earn as much as you can.</p>

<p>Where are you living now? Are you under age 18? If so, then you might be able to get independent status if you were kicked out. </p>

<p>If you got all C’s, can you still get HOPE?</p>

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<p>Yes I submitted FAFSA and I can still get my dad to co-sign if necessary since we’re still on good terms (my mom controls all the money in our family though). </p>

<p>As for jobs - is there a good place where I can find job openings? All the places in my area where high schoolers are usually hired (kroger, yogli mogli, etc) arent hiring, and I can’t find anything over the Internet. </p>

<p>And yeah I’m thankfully still eligible for HOPE.</p>

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<p>Good luck with the jobs, just keep knocking on doors and going back to places, when they see you are serious they may hire you. Also if you are on good terms with your dad, work with him to “mend fences” as Thumper 1 suggested. Getting along with your mom will make your life easier and better in so many ways now and later.</p>

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<p>*As for jobs - is there a good place where I can find job openings? All the places in my area where high schoolers are usually hired (kroger, yogli mogli, etc) arent hiring, and I can’t find anything over the Internet. </p>

<p>*</p>

<p>Find places that will be getting more business during the summer months…such as ice cream/frozen yoghurt places, fast food, touristy places, restaurants, etc. There may be some businesses that will want an extra person to help out while their regular employees take their own summer vacations.</p>

<p>You can also “pet sit” (take care of people’s pets while they’re on vacation)…put some flyers out to area neighborhoods and businesses …including animal hospitals (ask if that’s ok).</p>

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<p>How about mowing lawns?</p>

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<p>OP, just because you don’t like the advice doesn’t mean that it’s not good advice.</p>

<p>If your father were to start a thread here, would the title be “Rich dad decides not to fund his deserving kid!!!” - or something less flattering? A lot of parents are here; we’ve been kids, and we’ve been adults. </p>

<p>Most parents really want the best for their kids. Sometimes the best lesson is a tough lesson. I’ll give you one more piece of advice (since you did ask for advice). Your parents want to give you the best; now go figure out how to earn it in their eyes.</p>

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<p>Since my parents no longer support me financially, is there anyway I can convince the college that I am financially independent and need aid?</p>